Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
In the news
■ Nick Cooper, a volunteer with the Houston charity Food Not Bombs, said it was a moment “we had been waiting for for 11 years” as police ticketed a man for giving food to homeless people outside a public library, provoking anger and plans to challenge a long-standing city ordinance.
■ Susan Zimmerman of Austin, Texas, who is five months pregnant, said “I’m pretty sure she [her baby] slept through it” after a Lufthansa flight to Germany was diverted to Virginia when turbulence hit and the plane fell about 1,000 feet, with seven passengers suffering minor injuries.
■ Kerri Arakawa, a passenger on a Spirit Airlines flight from Dallas to Orlando, Fla., that was diverted to Jacksonville, Fla., when a battery caught fire in an overhead bin, said those rushing to the rescue included a retired firefighter.
■ Edmond Naman, a juvenile court judge in Mobile, Ala., was censured by a state ethics panel for repeatedly appointing his brother-in-law to handle indigent cases.
■ Thomas Hudson, president of Jackson State University in Mississippi, was put on administrative leave by the state governing board with no public explanation, but the faculty senate previously hit him with a vote of no confidence.
■ Gideon Avni said the Israel Antiquities Authority “takes full responsibility for the unfortunate event” as the government acknowledged that a recently discovered inscription in clay bearing the name of Darius the Great, ruler of the Persian Empire, is not authentic.
■ Lucian Simmons of Sotheby’s noted that this year marks the 25th anniversary of a landmark global conference on looted art as a Kandinsky painting that spent decades in a Dutch museum after its Jewish owner was killed in the Holocaust was sold at auction by her descendants for $44.9 million.
■ Tremaine Wright of New York’s Cannabis Control Board hailed the opportunity for entrepreneurs as the state doubles the number of marijuana-shop licenses it’s awarding to 300, while at the same time officials scramble to stop the proliferation of unauthorized pot stores and trucks.
■ Bill Rabon, sponsor of a North Carolina Senate bill to legalize medical marijuana, said the first time was just happenstance, the second time not so much, as legislators twice in a week voted at precisely 4:20 p.m., a number that’s cannabis-culture slang for smoking weed.